


long distance relationship

by mariie



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Fate, M/M, Post-Series, Red String of Fate, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:12:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariie/pseuds/mariie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everyone dies, but sometimes certain idiots don't have enough sense to stay out of people's dreams. douwata. post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	long distance relationship

And then one night, a little over nine years after Doumeki Shizuka’s death, Watanuki Kimihiro has a dream. He hasn’t dreamt of the dead in a long time, but it’s familiar. The clouds part and he sees a man standing, leaning against something that might not even be there.

“Haruka?” he says, first thing, and then the man turns to face him.

“You’re an idiot,” says the man, “We don’t look anything alike.”

Watanuki shakes his head and breathes out, and if it’s a little shaky, who can blame him? “Oh, I’m the idiot? It took you long enough.” He nods. “Bad timing is a terrible trait to have.”

Doumeki Shizuka shrugs. “It’s all a little fuzzier, when you’re dead. But you figure it out. Time is hard.”

Watanuki is quiet. “I know that. Don’t tell me about time passing differently. I don’t even know what year it is.”

Shizuka looks up at the evenly dark sky. “You’re sleeping with my great-grandson. I think I can say whatever I want.”

Watanuki starts, because, that. That’s. “That’s unfair,” he says, aloud, surprising himself, “Have you just been in a bad mood since you died? You lived a very long life. I don’t see the problem.” And he doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is that you weren’t here; because he knows he’s not a child who can just expect the world to turn around him.

“It was good,” Shizuka says. “A good life. But not the one I wanted.”

Watanuki shudders, terrified of the direction this conversation is headed. He can see it tilting towards prices and payments and all the big and little things he owes this man in front of him. “Why are you here, anyways?”

“There’s something I want,” he says, and Watanuki suppresses a groan. The dead. Of course. They always want something, the dead do. They never just want to say hello and have a cup of tea.

“You know what it is, Kimihiro,” Shizuka says, and nostalgia, as a rule, isn’t an emotion Watanuki is particularly familiar with, but it rises up and crashes when Shizuka speaks and he can’t hear for just a moment.

“I can’t do that,” Watanuki says.

“Why?”

“Because,” says Watanuki, and thinks, and when he opens his mouth, for perhaps the first time in his life, he’s honest with Doumeki Shizuka. “I’ll never see you again.”

“Not never,” agrees Shizuka, “Just for a little while. I can wait, besides. The timing will be better next time, I think. I was disappointed, but that’s the way it is.”

Watanuki nods resolutely. “How long?” It’s vague—intentionally so, but the dead in general are difficult to lie to, and Shizuka even more so. So of course he answers the question.

“Since…” he stops. Shrugs.

Watanuki nods. He remembers when his life was smaller and warmer, he remembers being human. And he feels everything rising up violently, everything human rushing towards his heart like it’s going to explode. “You’re the one,” he says, almost choking. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he wakes up.

Shizuka nods, saying something like: good enough, and then Watanuki wakes up.

* * *

And Watanuki looks at the figure next to him in the huge bed with the opium pillow (it’s uncomfortable, but looks matter.) and he sighs.

“Good morning,” he says to the man next to him, and the man sits up and nods, and says, “Good morning.”

Watanuki lifts a hand and places it on the man’s cheek. He looks at his pinky finger, again, and shakes his head, because the string, nowadays, now that he can see it, just goes straight up and disappears. “I can’t tell the difference,” he says, and the man turns his head and looks out the window and smiles.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day,” says the man.

Watanuki looks at the winter-white sun that’s somehow overpowering the clouds, and grinning through the trees. It reflects the world underneath it.“It is,” He agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is my idea of a joke!  
> a lot of it is mostly just promises. post-series, post-death-fic?? the idea being: people die, but man, if your grandpa can go running around this guy's dreams, why can't you?  
> if douwata as a pairing had a motto it would be this: you tried! b- work, guys :) (p.s. i love them a lot can you tell??)


End file.
